


Mazeras

by DawningStar, Tel



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Barrayar, Gen, Mad Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All jump pilots are crazy. So are all Vorrutyers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mazeras

**Author's Note:**

> This work requires some introduction. In the summer of 2009 I ran a freeform Barrayaran RPG campaign set during Vordarian's Pretendership. The players were illegally detained Betan Survey personnel disappeared into a prison camp before the Escobaran war and forgotten about. DawningStar plays Anna in this piece, which is set on the lakeside estate of Lord Dono Vorrutyer.

The boat rocked gently in the calm waters of Lac Granet. Below decks, Lieutenant (junior grade) Anna Rugambwa stayed absolutely still and silent. Footsteps echoed above her head. Caught, she thought. It was foolish to hide, but maybe they wouldn't come down here. She could hear Vorfolse's panicked tenor on the deck as he talked to the boarders, as well as Lieutenant Kane's more measured tones.

They'd all screwed up. That much was clear. Anna didn't trust Vorfolse at all, at least their shanghaied Barrayaran officer hadn't deliberately sabotaged them. He was even backing up their cover story, though that might be due to a natural male reluctance to admit he'd been kidnapped by a trio of female Betan officers and a herm tech. She retreated inwardly, trying not to move, trying not to think, even. They'd come so far since their escape. It was horribly depressing to think that it might have all been for nothing.

The engines thrummed as one of the boarders took the helm. A man in blue and gray swung below decks, flashing a light around. Anna curled behind her fortress of life-preservers in the bow, absolutely still. If the man saw a flash of dark green thigh he surely mistook it for a flotation cushion, for after that cursory check he went back above decks.

Someone above decks spoke into a radio, and behind her eyes, her mind lit up. Sparks danced as her jump-implant absorbed and reprocessed the encrypted signal, though it wavered just on the far edge of comprehensibility. The country station from a nearby city was a red circle in her thoughts, humming quietly in the background. Some of the near towers pulsed radar into the skies, a backbeat more reliable than her racing heart.

Keilo came below to fetch the bumpers as they docked. A man watched it from above, nerve disruptor casually trained. The herm didn't linger, sharing only a brief, hard-to-read glance with Anna. Under the cover of Keilo's rustling, Anna shifted position to better hide herself. The boat rocked harder as Betans and Barrayarans alike disembarked. 

Soon, Zenobia's voice faded into the distance as she and her companions were escorted away. She sensed a glowing green dot behind her ear, a fisherman on the terraformed lake talking about the weather. A blue squiggle was a newscast, carefully neutral, carefully not taking sides... yet. She did five-space math in her head to stay calm.

It was a long time before Anna dared to stir again. She had only just begun to stretch when the echo of footsteps on the dock made her freeze once more, her eyes wide in the dark. She closed them, and wished she dared move. Something chirped, loudly. She flinched. It chirped again.

There were footsteps on the deck now. A man spoke, carefully pleading. "M'lord, it's time for dinner." Yet another chirp, louder, and then a series of them. The boat rocked against the bumpers as two people boarded. "Hmmm," another voice said in a faintly disturbing tone. "Open that."

The hatch swung open, and the mechanical chirps turned into a chorus as the cool evening air started to pool in the bottom of the boat. Someone started to descend the ladder with painstaking care. After he reached the bottom, he leaned against the cabinet and waving his chirping device about. Unlatching one of the cabinets, he chuckled.

"This will teach you to doubt me, Iago! My security screen's better than a pack of guards. It wouldn't miss something like this!"

 "My apologies, m'lord." the man on deck said coolly. "What did you find?"

There was reedy enthusiasm in the first man's voice. "There's a strong power source down here. Could be a bomb, even. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Not, um, particularly, m'lord."

 "Oh, loosen up." The man below dug through the cabinet, finally finding one of the supposed 'Betan superweapons' the Barrayarans had confiscated from their Jacksonian terraforming engineer when they had been captured and disappeared. Anna wasn't sure exactly what the thing did, but she didn't think the truth was nearly as glamorous as the paranoid Barrayaran fantasies.

"Ah-hmmm. I wonder what this does?"

"Don't _fool_ with it, m'lord..." the man on deck said through gritted teeth. 

His advice went unheeded.  "How fascinatingly foreign. I wonder how it opens?"

"Do you want me to get a security scanner down here? We could find out if it's explosive."

A chuckle from the other side of the life vest pile. "Oh, some bombs only go off when they're scanned. Great design, that."

The man above decks swallowed. "M'lord, maybe we should..."

"Oh, THIS is interesting.” The reedy voice took on a faint hint of glee. More rustling in the other end of the boat.

"...What?"

"There's a whole workshop's worth of tools here. All military issue. How bizarre. I wonder if that feckless dolt Vorfolse was gunrunning? And for what side?"

The other man sounded very strained now.  "M'lord, the Count is expecting you for dinner..."

"Bah. All of the Vorfolses are tedious, and I can't stand young Pierre."  Humming something tuneless, the man clambered back up the ladder awkwardly. His slow movements betrayed his age - an older man, certainly. "This is much more interesting. I'll be in my lab, Iago..."

The red circle wavered a moment. The world wavered, actually. Anna lifted her head in sudden focus. All sorts of interesting stuff took place in labs. She had the sudden desire to figure out what was going on in this one. The red circle danced warning, and she wondered in a brief moment of lucidity why she was thinking like this, why her mind spun in a captive rhythm. But a jump-pilot did not dare think about her instincts. That was a sure way to lose oneself to the umber rips.

This was more than instinct. The weight of memory swallowed her, memory too real to deny, so long ago (long ago?) that the details were beyond blurry. She had a friend, she remembered. A friend who was fascinated with labs, who wanted to know all about them. His name was Ivan, yes.

She tried to remember more details, but they slipped away. The harder she thought about it the further away it all seemed. Perhaps she knew him in school.

She did know his number, though, remembered it like it was burned into her brain. He had numbers on a lot of planets. He'd surely like to hear from her if she found something interesting.

She slunk out from her hiding place, finding a hat to press down over her fuzzy green hair, looking up at the retreating men with wide eyes. "Hi," she said bravely. "Who are you?"

Both men looked back. The younger one in blue and gray choked, his eyes widening. He stumbled back, one hand making a warding gesture, and fell off the boat.

The older man was still, considering her thoughtfully. His skin was as pale as hers was dark, and his wispy hair hung in white curls. He raised his hand up and looked at it, and she mirrored the gesture, staring at the bright green palm of her hand and then at his face. He grinned, and pointed a small hand-held device at her. It chirped. He laughed.

"Aha," he said. "You're not a water demon. I didn't think they wore hats like that anyway."

"Are there water demons around here?" Anna asked, with a worried look around.

"Oh yes. Rusalkas. They're famous on the Zidiarch River for dragging away drunk sailors who fall off the boat to their underwater castles. Or is that rum nymphs? I can never remember."

A splash, and a gasping sound from the water below.  "Don't look in her eyes!"

"Watch out for the toe-eating security crabs!" the old man said cheerfully. More flailing noises from the water.

"My name is Anna," she said, with as friendly a smile as she can possibly give. "What's yours?"

His eyebrows rose, and then he gave her a bow. "Lord Dono Vorrutyer. At your service. You're not the sort of young lady who builds underwater castles, then? Pity. The world needs more creativity. It's flat out. They've fought this civil war twice in the past hundred years..."

"I can't breathe underwater," Anna confessed. "But sometimes I think it would be really nice if I could."

"Most people can't. That's why the crabs work so well."

"Do they really eat toes?" She looked worriedly after the guard. "Shouldn't he come up, then?"

Dono smiled gravely. "Only if people like air more than toes. That's not his immediate problem, though. He can't swim, and he's afraid of touching the bottom."

"Oh." Anna thought about that a moment, then fetched a life jacket for the man in the water and dropped it to him. The floundering guard grabbed the life-jacket, and came up for air. Lord Dono watched, interested.

"Are you taking the thingy?" Anna asked him, waving vaguely at the device. "What do you think it does?"

He frowned. "Hmmm. It's a very strong energy source. Looks foreign. Might muck with fundamental forces of the universe, you never know. Especially with Jacksonians. But then, being a a cyborg water demon, you know all that."

Anna smiled brightly at the compliment, shrugged, and said, "I don't know what the thingy does either. Can I come with you? I'll be very quiet," she promised. "Only it's very boring here."

Dono gave her a sharp look, like he wasn't sure what to think about her. "Why were you hiding?" he asks. "Iago would ask, but he's too wet."

"Because I'm green," Anna said, "and they thought the Count wouldn't like me, so I was staying hidden."

"Oh, Pierre likes women any way he can!" Dono said. "That wouldn't be too much of an issue, unless you're a witch. And witches aren't cyborgs. Not traditionally."

"It would be fun to be able to do magic," Anna admitted wistfully. "Am I a cyborg?"

Dono tapped his little device and smiled, looking at the jump-implant contacts near her eyes. "Fascinating, that. I don't suppose you know anything about bombs?"

"Not to go near one if I can help it," Anna said.

"Generally smart." He looked thoughtful. "Who are you, anyway? Besides an Anna. Nice name. Useful even if you're turned inside-out, which is more than you can say of most names."

"I'm from Beta," she replied cheerfully, before frowning. "Only now there's some kind of war on and we can't get home."

"A lot of people are having that sort of problem these days. They blew up some of my buildings, you know, in the capital." A sudden flash of anger was betrayed on Dono's face, quickly suppressed.

"Oh, did you build the pretty towers here?" Anna asked. She'd seen them from afar, before she had to hide, spires and arches and stranger things, like a sea of asexually reproducing concrete constructions wrapped in glass veils.

"I've built much more than that, my dear. I can show you the pictures, if you'd like." He beamed. "So few people show an interest."

"I'd love to see the pictures," Anna said. She wasn't the fan of weird tech Technician Keilo was, but something about the towers reminded her of a jump, a wild jump in the unexplored wilderness beyond Nuovo Brasil.

Dono's eyebrows rose. "I like this one, Iago," he called out. "I think I'll have dinner in the lab." The blue-and-gray-uniformed bodyguard finally made it to shore, sopping, shivering, and staying at least ten meters back.

Anna looked around, shrugged, and stepped out on the dock. It was silver-colored, and curved away from the boat. On the lake side she could see that it rose up in a hump and then dived underwater, emerging as the head of some ancient, mad sea-monster. There was a faint glint of sunset in the far west over the water. The lake was too vast for her to see the further shore.

She followed Dono, up wide marble steps, past constructions in concrete, steel, and stranger things. There was a great hole in the earth where something was under construction, and a large machine of uncertain purpose. Her head sparked yellow, and she heard Iago calling in to his superiors, raving about a green water demon. The return transmission leapt out in her head like a silver thread on black cloth, finally decrypted. "_You've been spending too much time around Lord Dono,_" Iago's boss said. "_It'd drive anyone to drink_."

She followed the Vor lord to a small, recessed door set into a concrete block, next to a half-melted tower that appeared to be made out of soap. Lord Dono's comlink chimed, somebody asking him about water demons. His eyes danced as he raised the comlink to his lips to answer. "Don't be silly," he said

The door opened to a wide, blocky room. The walls were covered in ancient building plans printed as blue-lined flimsies. A large plotter was visible in a side room, but a holo display table dominated the main room. Many of the plans were labeled MAZERAS in pathologically neat block print, showing the progress of Lord Dono's domain over time.

A few other buildings were on display, as models. Most were remarkably ugly, with oversized steps, massive pillars, few windows and no real elegance. They were essentially solid, though, well-grounded. Unlike their creator.

Night fell over the cityscape on the main display table. It was a true city, sprawling over a river valley. Every detail was perfect. Lights started to appear in the high towers, and on the boats going up and down the river. She smiled at Lord Dono.

Dono quirked an eyebrow at her and closed his eyes. The city vanished in fire, so searingly bright that she could hardly see past the afterimage. Buildings shattered, disappearing into holographic shards, leaving a scorched and barren scar where the bright heart of the city had been.

"What's that?" Anna asked, hoping it isn't something that just happened. Really, even Barrayarans should have more restraint than that.

Dono looked up and smiled at her awkwardly. "Oh, that's my urban renewal model. In case they never found the bomb in the Ministry of Political Education." He pressed a few buttons. The cityscape started to reshape itself, like the towers outside but grander and on a more practical scale. "A silliness of mine. The moderns have no appreciation for my talents."

"Too busy blowing each other up?" she asked.

"Something like that. Nobody builds buildings to last these days." He pointed proudly to a building on the plot. "ImpSec would survive that. Not like these flimsy estates and high-rises. I heard Vordarian trashed the Vorbretten estate. Serves old René right for backing MacManus over me for Imperial Architect."

Still blinking away afterimages, Anna examined the new city of towers. There were some really ugly buildings, but they were still a little bit like some jumps; the ones that let you know you're not fully welcome there, you can't ever have complete control over them. She thought it was a shame Lord Dono was born too early to be a jump pilot, though she had the sense not to say that at the moment. Meanwhile, Dono poked at a machine and made it produce coffee.

"The Ministry blocks were old and amateurish," he said, "but I was fond of them. First thing I built for Yuri, you know. A man like him couldn't be too careful."

"These are excellent designs," she said earnestly, and came over as she recognized the smell. Coffee couldn't be that terribly different here, right? He poured her a cup and she drank. It was fantastic. "Thank you," she said.

He tilted his head at her. "So what do you want, young lady? Not too many people visit my estate unless they want something. Even Pierre wants something, the rat."

Anna shrugged. "Just to go home, really," she said sadly. "Or not to be shot at until we can, at least, I suppose. What does Pierre want?" she added, curiously.

"An edge. He thinks I have one." Dono sipped at his own cup of coffee. "Ah yes. Beta Colony. They tend to build down. Can't do that here, things will flood. It's so much easier when you mostly don't have to worry about the soil moisture content. This is a much more livable planet, really."

"I guess this is a better planet for building towers," Anna said thoughtfully. "Until they get blown up, anyway."

Dono grunted in profound annoyance. "It was completely unnecessary. It's not like Ezar was going to change anything about how the planet was run by burning down the Ministry of Political Education. It was just a show. A wasteful show. Maybe even a suicidal one."

"What you ought to have is a constitution," Anna recommended. "I think it works better than improvising all the time. Anyway no one ever shot at me on Beta."

The Vor lord considered this. "Well, Betans are strange. How do you deal with people who annoy you then?"

"Mostly we yell a lot," Anna said. "And vote them out of office. If they're in one."

"And what about insults to honor?"

Anna couldn't remember anything like that ever coming up. "Take them to court for slander?" she asked doubtfully.

Dono's eyebrows went up.  "My grandfather told me that it was ridiculous to say an architect had honor. He was wrong." He flipped the display back to the wasted city, then gave Anna a pleased smile. "I'll respect the integrity of the building, I think. Damn the consequences."

Anna nods faintly, very puzzled. "What building?"

Dono called up the glowing outlines of a block of towers on the holodisplay. The towers were square and unlovely. "Yuri had the Ministry built very particularly. Just in case anybody took it in his head to depose him."  
   
Staring at the display, Anna had a growing bad feeling about this. "Particularly?" she asked, hoping she was wrong.

"Oh yes. I told Ezar's young deputy, back in the day. A weakness, but I still thought Ezar would renew my appointment. But Ezar betrayed all of us, and that has consequences."

Blinking at the towers, Anna asked carefully, "You mean it was built to blow up?"

"The traitor's successors will never see it coming. Unless they disarmed it. But that's a tricky thing to do. It was built to last.

"Tricky," Anna echoed, stunned.

"It has to be told not to be explode every so often," Dono said. His deep anger was visible again, veiled behind a shell of amused civility. "And since they burned the building down and killed everyone in it, there's nobody there to do that. And it's nobody's fault but theirs. I never thought it would actually happen, but..." he shrugged and laughed creakily. "Old Yuri will have his revenge yet. I don't think Grishnov ever told his new Emperor about what he found in the subbasements."

"It seems awfully unfair to the people in the way," Anna said firmly, rallying. "Shouldn't you warn them somehow?"  
   
He shrugged. "The architecture’s more important. People are replaceable."

"No, they aren't!" Anna exclaims, deeply shocked. "People are--are--if you spent twenty years on one project, that's almost enough for one person. People are the most complicated architecture there is!"

He looked a little blank. "Some village girl can pop one out in nine months." he said. "Besides, only an idiot would stay in the capital right now. Vorkosigan could destroy it any day if he wanted to, he's got the firepower. Myself, I'll die soon enough. But my works will last a lot longer than I..."  
   
Anna scowled and said, "You ought to disarm it," for lack of anything more persuasive to try. "Even Barrayarans should have more sense than to blow each other up out of, of neglect! And I can't see how killing random people trapped in the capital is any use at all."

"I used to think like that. But there'll be new buildings, and new people. I was commissioned to build it, and if other people reap the rewards of their foolishness, my honor is satisfied." He squinted at her. "It's silly for a Betan to say that buildings are less important than people anyway. If you take all the buildings off Beta Colony, all of the people would die of exposure. If you take all the people off, the buildings would still be there."

"Buildings don't mean anything without people to understand them," Anna said. And maybe she's thinking more about wormholes again, but it seemed like the same principle to her. "People can build more buildings. Buildings can't build more people."

"Hmm, well, perhaps." There was a knock at the door of the lab. Lord Dono returned the holotable to the display of the intact city. A servant in blue and gray was there, with one plate for dinner. He looked disapproving.

Anna blinked at the food, and realized that the last of her coffee was cold and she'd lost her appetite. Stupid bombs had to spoil everything. The servant caught sight of her and stared. Turning herself green in an attempt to reproduce a transcendental jump experience maybe hadn't been the brightest of ideas, but the fear and revulsion the local populace showed towards her still hurt. She wasn't at home here. She couldn't ever be. 

"Oh, go away," Dono said brusquely to the servant. "I'm busy, and this is my house, and it's not your business."

"Yes, m'lord," the servant said. He scuttled out with a nervous glance back.

Lord Dono sat, not even glancing at the dinner plate. "If a building is oppressed, can't it fight back?" he asked her wistfully.

"Equal rights for buildings?" Anna mused. "But not fighting with bombs, that's just--" Except it seems to be about as far as Barrayaran civilization has gone. "Anyway, who's oppressing it, exactly?"

He growled under his breath. "They burnt it down, some months back, for stupid political reasons. Murdered nearly everyone inside."

Right, she thought. He'd said something like that. "Who burnt it down?"

"The old Emperor."

"But he's dead already."

Dono frowned. "That is a point."

"So I think you should disarm it, or delay it, or whatever," Anna repeated herself, as if it wasn't obvious enough what she thought. She hadn't talked this much since after she was green the first time.

He rose to pace, frustrated.  "They don't care, though. None of them care about the city. They just move around, and fight over it, and build huge statues of themselves. None of them care. I don't know if I care anymore. Vorbarr Sultana doesn't want anything more to do with me, I've heard often enough. But I build for these eventualities. And that really is important. "  
   
"Well, I think they're throwing enough bombs around without yours," Anna said. "And if no one cares, the bomb won't make a difference anyway. Except I think they'd be awfully mad at you. And your buildings."

"Hmph. They've been talking about tearing down the stadium for decades. It'll last another two centuries at least, but they're impatient." Dono glowered at invisible critics. "I don't see why I should care what they think. My grandfather never cared what anyone thought." He took a deep breath. "But I don't know." Bringing up the simulation on the holodisplay, he focused on the replacement city plan for the area projected to be destroyed. "What could be is more interesting than what is, sometimes. There's a couple months left before someone has to go set the delay again. I'm still debating."

Anna nodded, relieved to have a vague time frame. "Would they really let you build it, though?"

"No." He sighed. "I miss working in the capital. The skyscape begs to be shaped. If they let me create one last building... but they have no taste."  
   
"I believe you," Anna agreed. Being without taste was one of the lesser crimes of Barrayar in her book, but it still counted.

"Really?" He brightened. "Well. Hmm. Maybe you could talk to Vordarian," he said. "Or Vorkosigan. Whoever manages to win. Might be neither, I guess." His eyes narrowed. "I want to build a tower. If they let me build the tower, I'll give them the codes." He paused. "Vordarian's terribly dull, though. And Vorkosigan's mad for spaceships. But they might be redeemable, who knows?"

"I hardly think they'll listen to me," she said doubtfully. "Wouldn't someone in your family be better?"

He chuckled without humor. "Well, my brother Pierre would probably take the opportunity to blackmail them both and declare himself Emperor. Then we'd all get shot."

"I only meant, as you're a lord here, and I'm a foreigner and all."

Dono grinned, a dancing light in his hazel eyes. "Yes, but you're green. They'll pay attention to that!"


End file.
